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Thank you, Sugarcane. I have emailed the radio show as suggested. My husband will be home from work in a couple of hours (I took a mental health day). I told him that I have been posting to the forum and he wants to look at this when he gets home. Is this recommended?


Me 56
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Oh yes. Send him here. We can tell him a thing or two hundred that he needs to hear. We will also show him what to read.

What did your email say? Would you mind posting it here?


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I copied and pasted excerpts from this thread. Do you still want me to post it? It is basically a rehash.


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I received a reply to my email to Dr. Harley. His wife, Joyce, responded and asked me to call any morning to discuss speaking on the radio show.


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That's wonderful! Will you go on the show?


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I am not sure about that yet.

My husband has just begun to read my thread. When he gets through that, what happens next? Should he respond on my thread or begin a new one with his thoughts?


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He should make his own account and start his own thread.

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Thanks for the timely reply. He has just finished creating his account.


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Originally Posted by SugarCane
That's wonderful! Will you go on the show?
When will you be on the show? Will your Husband be on the show with you or just you?


FWW/BW (me)
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Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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I don't know the answers yet. Joyce Harley emailed this afternoon and asked me to call her any morning to discuss details. I will call her in the morning on Saturday. If they want my husband too, he will participate.


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Still here, doing lots of reading. I wonder could I have some feedback regarding my first attempt at POJA?

Today (at work), he sent me an email that his brother is asking if he wants to travel this evening to a city an hour away to attend a wake of a man who grew up in their home community, asking me how I felt about him going with his brother.

I replied that I would feel disappointed as I hoped we could continue working on MB stuff.

He then copied me in on a reply he sent to his brother saying he has a prior commitment and to offer his condolences.

I am thinking to myself, "This is still him making decisions without POJA. I answered his question, how would I feel, he takes it that he can't go. If things follow the general pattern, he will feel love buster of selfish demand, "she wouldn't let me go" and then be silently or not so silently pissed." I sent him another email saying this�

I could be wrong and we can ask on the Forum, but if we were to POJA, what would this look like?

Identify the issue; is it

1. You would like to attend the wake?
1. You would like to attend the wake with your brother?

Once identified, we get each others preference.

If preferences don�t line up, we POJA

We come up with ideas where my hopes to continue with MB talk and yours of attending the wake are both considered.

How do you feel about my thoughts on POJA?

His reply..

Sorry, I have 6 letters I am supposed to get out today. We can talk about this this evening

Later, when we got home from work, we talked some more and we worked out what he wanted and what I wanted and ended up agreeing to go to the city and have a nice dinner out, enjoying friendly conversation during the ride and dinner and then attend the wake together. And that is what we did. And we had a nice evening.




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While I was making lunch today, I had the following thoughts concerning POJA...

We rent a condo in Florida every winter for 2-3 weeks (a few years now). We buy some groceries and eat most of our meals at the condo. Something I like about this is that I have to be creative with meals. As we are only there for a short time, I don't have or buy the usual spices, condiments, etc. I try very hard to portion our groceries so we have minimal waste at the end of our vacation. This results in me/us inventing new recipes. Like salad with unusual combinations of ingredients or marinating sauce, sandwich fillers, etc.

Today, at home, I wanted to make sandwiches for lunch. Because we are low on groceries, I didn't have the usual items, veggies and such, to work with.

So, we have a problem, what is it? How to make a turkey sandwich without the usual ingredients. We didn't have bread or tomatoes or lettuce, etc. The "issue" in this scenario is not that I needed to make a turkey sandwich so much as it is...how to I make a decent lunch to satisfy my need to eat, with the ingredients I have to work with?

In this example, complaining that I don't have the right ingredients, or getting angry that I don't have the right ingredients, or telling my spouse how negligent he/she was in not having the ingredients in the house, will not satisfy my need to eat.

So, we want to eat. We have u, v, w, x, y and z ingredients. We make a sandwich/lunch using some or all of the ingredients we have.

A conflict with the spouse should be the same...his "ingredients" (thoughts, wants, needs) are different from her "ingredients" (thoughts, wants, needs); one spouse wants to do something that makes the other unhappy, do we complain that the spouse has different ingredients than me or do we work with what we've got to make a new recipe/plan/course of action and get what we both need?

It kinda makes sense in my head, not sure it translates in written form though dontknow


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what you describe sounds alot like COMPROMISE, which is taking a little bad and a little good and mixing it together. The POJA subscribes a THIRD WAY, such as this:

Originally Posted by Melodylane
I hate Chinese food and my H hates Mexican. I love Mexican and he loves Chinese. So I make a compromise with him that he endures Mexican and as an "incentive" I will go suffer through Chinese with him.

Lets say we practice a "compromise" and we go for Mexican one night and Chinese the next night. That means that I will be unhappy on one night and he will be unhappy the next because we are each gaining at the others EXPENSE for one night.

This is called sacrifice aka win/lose. It leads to incompatibility and resentment. It leads to incompatibility because people won't do things that make themselves unhappy for long. I might go for Chinese 3 or 4 times and tolerate that nasty food, but pretty soon I will be finding reasons to AVOID going out to eat and he will be resentful, because people who practice sacrifice KEEP SCORE. He will be mad because I "OWE" him a Chinese night to pay for his Mexican night.

The solution recommended by Marriage Builders avoids all that. Instead of going to ANY restaurant that one spouse doesn't like, the solution is to find a restaurant that BOTH LOVE. Mexican and Chinese are completely OFF our lists. In it's place is a list of restaurants we both like. This solution builds compatibility because it ensures we are BOTH happy and no one sacrifices at the others expense.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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Yes, I can see that it may skirt the edge of compromise. May I explain a bit further and get your thoughts?

I wanted us to spend time together. He wasn't against spending time together, he wanted to do that too. I wasn't against going to the wake, I hadn't been asked (in fairness to him, I avoid wakes when I can). He wouldn't have minded spending the time with his brother, but it didn't bother him not to. In fact, he said he wouldn't have gone alone even though he felt he should go.

We were both enthusiastic about our decision to do both dinner and the wake together. We felt like we both won.

Thank you so much for helping me to further understand the concept.



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I think you did a great job negotiating a solution in the case of the wake. But I want to point out a couple of things. First off, your husband did the right thing in declining the invitation when you said you were not enthusiastic about him going. That is what I would expect him to do. What you did here was disrespectful:

Quote
I am thinking to myself, "This is still him making decisions without POJA. I answered his question, how would I feel, he takes it that he can't go. If things follow the general pattern, he will feel love buster of selfish demand, "she wouldn't let me go" and then be silently or not so silently pissed." I sent him another email saying this�

First off it is not a selfish demand for you to not agree to his going. A selfish demand is to demand he DO something, not that he don't do something that makes you unhappy. He should not do anything without your enthusiastic agreement. It is a disrespectful judgement to assume he will be "pissed off " or react in a certain way "she won't let me go." He did the right thing in this situation.

If you did not mean for him to decline the invitation and wanted to negotiate, you could have told him that then. You didn't tell him this and then chastised him for declining the invitation. That wasn't fair to him.

In the end, you did a super job negotiating a desirable solution, but I would avoid assuming his reaction and prejudging him. I want to emphasize this, though: it is not a "selfish demand" to ask your husband to NOT do something that makes you unhappy. There is nothing wrong with saying no, I don't want you to go.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

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Thank you. I see what you are saying about the disrespectful part in the highlighted box. To clarify though, those were my thoughts, I didn't say/ write it to him. The last sentence in the box..."I sent him an email saying this..." referred to the POJA stuff below that line. The part preceding the "I sent him an email.." were my thoughts.

However, I can see where I should clear my mind of disrespectful thoughts.


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How do you get that box around certain portions of text?


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Originally Posted by Barigirl
How do you get that box around certain portions of text?
Use the quote function.


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Originally Posted by Barigirl
How do you get that box around certain portions of text?
Do you see these buttons on the bottom of each post?

Reply Quote Quick Reply Quick Quote Notify Email Post

Click "quote", and the post appears as a quote. Delete any part of the original post that you do not want to quote, but leave the brackets at the beginning and end of the post fully intact.

Click "preview post" to check that your post looks the way you want it to, before hitting "submit".


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Originally Posted by Barigirl
I don't know the answers yet. Joyce Harley emailed this afternoon and asked me to call her any morning to discuss details. I will call her in the morning on Saturday. If they want my husband too, he will participate.
Did you call Joyce?


BW
Married 1989
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2 kids.
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